You Are Unforgotten
by katietheunicorn
Summary: Now that Carrie is in New York and back with the police, she must revisit everything she ran from all those years ago. Of course, it doesn't help that she'll be working with Al again. She'll get by. She'd kick herself if she didn't.
1. Chapter 1

The coffee here was great, Carrie noted to herself as she sipped some milky liquid at the _Coffee Cafe_. Great coffee, not so great title.

Bitter though her coffee was, it warmed her nicely as snow fell around the cafe and sent New York City into a craze, despite the fact that it was only yet around half a centimetre deep. As she spoke, she heard some wheel spin outside, which she turned in her seat to view. Her eyes widened and she stood, spilling her coffee onto the table, as she saw a large car with several passengers careening toward a still SUV, parked in the middle of a one-way street with no driver.

Before the cars had even collided, Carrie lifted her phone to her ear and ran out into the small parking lot, pulling on her leather jacket as she came to a stop.

The smash of metal on metal was deafening just as Al answered his cell phone.

"Carrie?!" he cried once he'd heard the noise.

"I'm fine – get down here, _Coffee Cafe_, these people are going to get hurt."

Carrie said nothing more as she shoved her phone deep in her pocket and ran towards the cars. The SUV was obviously armoured, it had barely even rocked as the people carrier had charged into it. _Or the family car was tampered with_, Carrie thought, disliking the clichéd expression but knowing full well the meaning it often held.

The front left corner of the car had been completely smashed beyond rescue, so Carrie ran around to the back door on the other side and tugged on the handle. Locked. She pulled at the passenger door and it opened. A male fell out and Carrie caught him quickly, dragging him out and toward the curb opposite the diner, where a collection of witnesses had gathered. "Come help him, please!" she called out and, thankfully, a few gentlemen ran over and took the male from her.

Returning to the car, Carrie reached behind the passenger seat and pulled up the lock. She wrenched open the back door and found a toddler, possibly around three, crying on her car seat, with the most desperate, helpless expression on her face. Carrie glanced quickly over and saw her likely brother, around ten, unconscious in his seat.

"Sweetheart, honey, it's okay, my name's Carrie Wells and I work for the police, alright? You wanna put your hands up here?" Carrie tapped her shoulders and the girl wrapped her arms around them as Carrie reached across and popped her seat belt.

The girls pink car seat was completely undamaged; it was the front of the car that had taken the full brunt. "What's your name, sweetie?" Carrie asked softly.

"Alisa," the girl barely whispered, gasping through her tears.

"I promise you'll be okay, Alisa, these people have run over to help you. You'll be safe with them, alright? You hear me?"

Alisa nodded as Carrie set her on her feet and she turned toward a waiting woman who was just starting to show pregnancy.

"Daddy!" the little girl cried, and the pregnant woman carried her over to sit beside her father, where a thick coat was set upon her shoulders.

"One for him, too," Carrie instructed.

The smell of fuel caught her nose. She jogged over to the front of the car, where the bonnet steamed and hissed. It was too hot to touch, and Carrie knew there was little time left.

Carrie dived into the backseat and unclipped the boy's seat belt. She dragged him across Alisa's car seat and lifted him up, struggling under his weight to the curb.

Really pushing for time and adrenaline, Carrie sprinted to the passenger door and unfastened the driver seat belt. It was a female with a very large head wound. She slouched over her airbag as Carrie pulled on her wrist – which she could feel was fractured – to remove her from the car. The muscles around the broken bone tensed horribly, but Carrie was sure that the woman would rather her life than her hand.

She tugged with all the strength she had until the woman was hanging halfway out of the passenger door. Carrie saw the briefest glimpse of flames in her peripheral vision.

The car exploded just as Carrie had covered half of the distance between it and the curb, where she was knocked to the ground by the force of it. She turned to see the driver's limp hand burning, hanging off the passenger seat. "No," Carrie whispered as she realised she'd been too late. Just two more seconds, two more and that family may have had a mother as well.

"No!" Carrie gasped and turned to see where the voice had come from.

The passenger was sitting up by now and had just seen his wife blown to smithereens.

Carrie sat up slowly and watched him with her mouth open, her pained expression appearing as though she'd cry herself. The man looked as though he'd physically been stabbed: he was writhing as much as his broken body would allow and crying uncontrollably.

As it often did, Carrie's mind wandered and she saw herself from years ago.

_Al was bent over her, crying without reigns in the same way as this man was now. She was injured badly, unconscious; her clothing was entirely soaked with blood._

"_Carrie!" he cried desperately, his hands fumbling over her uselessly. He tried to put pressure on her wound as she let a very quiet moan escape her lips._

"_Oh, Carrie!" Al repeated, leaning over and cradling her head in his lap, drenching his suit in blood. "Carrie, I thought... Oh, Carrie!"_

_Al continued to cry over her until the EMTs came. He wouldn't let go of her hand until he was dragged away while she was X-Rayed. An EMT in the ambulance told him to keep speaking to her, and he told her stories of their past together for three hours straight, achieving the faintest smiles when she slipped temporarily into consciousness now and then. _

_Carrie remembered every detail of the room, the words he spoke while she was awake and most of those he spoke while she was drifting back to sleep._

"_You remember that time we took my sister and her family to the movies? We thought they were engrossed in the film, and I kissed you and suddenly the kids and about ten others they'd met turned around and they cried out! They thought we were gross! And then I started to pull away, but you grinned and kissed me again, sneaking a few glances at them. They all pretended to be sick, but they laughed a lot. You've always been so great with kids..."_

"Carrie!" Al called, startling her out of her reverie. He ran over to where she was sitting on the ground and knelt in front of her. He whispered her name again when he saw the blood gushing from her head. Déjà vu weighed heavily on him for a moment before he snapped back to reason.

"Okay, Carrie, can you hear me? You doing all right?" he shouted over the roar of sirens and people crashing around.

"Yeah, Al, I'm fine, what's up, why are you so worried?" Carrie chuckled slightly, though her eyes darted back to the passenger frequently as he was loaded onto a cot.

"Carrie, you can't even feel you're hurt?" Al's eyes were shining and his voice shook almost imperceptibly.

"Why, what's wrong with me?" Carrie asked uncertainly. She was definitely behaving entirely out of character.

Though it was cold, even for February, Carrie still wore only a thin tan sweater under her jacket. Her black trousers were damp and smudged with snow; her badge was still attached around a belt loop but it was now dirty; there were embers everywhere, burning holes in her trousers and top in several places, and the car, she could see, was sending even more out as it was extinguished by the fire brigade.

"Come on," Al said, tugging gently on her arm and leading her to an ambulance.

Carrie winced as she put weight on her left foot. She limped to the ambulance with Al's support, but she wanted nothing more that to sleep. "Let me rest, Al," she murmured.

"Carrie! You need to stay awake, I'm sorry, but you do. Look, we're right here," Al continued to say things to her as an EMT led her to the chair just inside the door.

"Déjà vu, huh?" Carrie said quietly as she looked up at him.

Al couldn't say anything, his throat was so thick. For need of just the slightest comfort, Carrie reached out and gripped his hand. "I feel dizzy," she whispered.

"All right, Carrie, they're going to drug you up now, hon," Al soothed.

Carrie smiled slightly when she heard him call her 'hon.' He'd always called her that when they were together. It still gave her butterflies.

"Carrie!" Nina and Roe called as they reached the back doors of the ambulance.

"She'll be alright," Al told them as Carrie slipped into a foggy sedation in response to the shot in her vein.

"Al," she breathed before she slipped away.

"Yes, Carrie? Carrie, honey, what is it?"

"Stay with me."

"Of course. Of course, I'm here, honey. I'm here."


	2. Chapter 2

"Any news on the other vehicle?" Carrie asked as she hobbled into the office.

"Carrie," Al said. "You're back."

"No shit, Sherlock. Well?"

"Uh, it was bought in a store in Ohio two days ago, but the miles on it don't tally up to here, so it was on a flatbed or something for a while. It's fully armoured and it has bullet-proof glass, cages in the back... it's better reinforced than what we've got," Nina filled her in.

"Okay... I thought it was pretty built up when I first saw it. What about the family? Have you heard from the hospital?"

"Yes, Alisa's fine, Johnny's in intensive care and Frank, the passenger, is being prepped for theatre. The wife only just made it into the ER when I spoke to the nurses," Roe said.

At that, Carrie had to take a seat. She set her crutches against Al's desk. "Okay," she said quietly.

"They'll be able to tell us more in a couple of hours," Mike said.

Carrie replayed yesterday's events in her mind, looking closely at the young boy in the car. "His head," she said. "It's dented."

Her company nodded and murmured in agreement as she looked closer. "Wait..." she stood aside and watched herself pulling Alisa away, then diving back for the boy.

"None of their seatbelts held, they all slid around," Carrie said, snapping back to the present. "Someone messed with their safety."

"But who would want to kill a family like that?" Nina asked.

"That's our job – to find out. Get to it, everyone," Al instructed.

Nina, Roe and Mike left the room and each sat at a desk, pursuing files and databases, besides Mike, who went to talk to another of his teams.

"Carrie, are you sure you're alright to work today?" Al said as Carrie reached for her crutches.

"Yeah, I'm absolutely fine. This is itchy, but I'm fine," she answered, pointing to the bandage on her head which she'd covered with a cream knit beanie hat.

"You don't have to work this, just because you helped them."

"I know that," Carrie said defiantly. "I'm not doing this 'just because I helped them,' this is my job, remember?"

"Alright, alright," Al put his hands up. "Just making sure you're okay."

"I appreciate it," Carrie said as she left the room, meaning it more than either of them probably realised.

Al leaned against the front of his desk for a few moments longer before he sat behind it to get to work.

"Got a lead on the SUV, we're going down to the garage, then to the retailer, okay? Grab your gun," Carrie explained as she popped her head around the glass door into Al's office.

"Whoa, whoa, Carrie," Al called before she could disappear again.

"Yes?" Carrie said, annoyed she hadn't got away quickly enough; she'd been expecting this.

"You want to do the field work? I can take Nina – you don't have to put all that pressure on that ankle–"

"Two minutes – meet you down there," Carrie interrupted before returning to her desk and grabbing her jacket. She picked up the files on the SUV before heading to the elevator that would take her to the basement garage.

Al caught up with her just as the doors were closing. His tie was a little skew-whiff. Carrie reached up with her right hand and straightened it as best she could, but she needed her other hand to hold onto her crutches.

"I can't stand being a freaking invalid," she moaned.

"Yeah, never was you're thing, was it?" Al said and they laughed.

"_This is a joke," Carrie complained as Al helped her out of the car and onto her crutches._

"_It's necessary," Al said._

"_It's a freaking sprain! What's necessary is a Tylenol and a pressure bandage! Urgh!"_

_Al chuckled, frustrating Carrie even more. "Cool it, Carrie, it's nothing."_

"_Yeah, maybe to you. How am I meant to do anything like this?!"_

"_Carrie, you can do practically anything you normally would. It's not like you're bedridden. You'll be fine."_

_Carrie glared at him, but couldn't keep a straight face for long. She looked down as she tried to hide the beginnings of a smile, then looked up again and smiled at him brightly. She leaned in to kiss him and he responded accordingly, kneading the muscles around her shoulders as he explored her mouth._

_When she pulled away, she looked up at him, unintentionally seducing him, before turning and hobbling off on her crutches. Al pulled at her hips and she squealed. He caught her before she could fall and she laughed as he supported her. She kissed him upside-down before gripping his elbows and pulling herself back up._

_Al retrieved her crutches and handed them too her._

"_Stupid crutches," Carrie complained one last time before they entered the Syracuse PD offices. _

"_Oh I agree," Al said, his voice thick with sarcasm, "damn awful."_

_Carrie elbowed him for good measure._

"Okay, found anything for us?" Carrie called as they strode into the garage. Her voice was a little uncertain as the elevator doors brought her back to the present. She had to blink a lot to add moisture to her eyes; she knew she tended to stare into space when she was experiencing a memory.

"Oh, you'll be surprised," Roe said, ambling into view. "Fake number plates, fake serial number, shassy and body don't match, cheap tires, jammed steering... tons of parts have been removed. It's just armoured and bulletproof – protected from missiles, I expect. It makes no sense. There are a few polyester and cotton fibres here and there, some cigarette smoke residue, condensed water... Absolutely no DNA, not a hair sample, a fingerprint. Some guy, possibly guys, wanted to kill a perfectly harmless family and they went to extremes to do it."

"Okay, so there's not so much we can do right now," Al allowed.

"Let's research the family – see if they had any debts owed or relatives who were in trouble, someone they've testified against and cheated or whatever – every family member and family friend, businesses and finances," Carrie instructed quickly and efficiently.

"When did you become boss?" Al joked.

"Problem?" Carrie said coldly, her mind on the family she'd seen broken apart.

"Naw," Al said, knowing exactly how she was feeling and why she was reacting this way. He'd become attached to cases before: A girl he'd pulled out of a fire, his great aunt's murder and subsequent insurance fraud and his biological father's habit of killing other people.

"Retailer's garage. Or possible retailer, at least," Carrie ordered and she led Al out to the unmarked car, pretty fast for someone on crutches. She climbed into the front seat and told Al which way to turn first.

They were quiet in the car as Carrie watched their route on her cell phone and Al watched the road.

"You know, I never really say this, but it's really nice to have you back, Carrie," Al said softly, taking a moment to look over at her.

Carrie didn't say anything, though she met his gaze.

Al smiled. "How do you feel about that?"

"I'm not sure yet. I suppose it's... good to be doing something legal as a profession... it takes my mind off my mom... pays my rent... it's weird, though, remembering how it always used to be. How work used to feel to me. It's completely different here, like every detail's been reversed. I still don't know what to make of it."

"That's... honest," Al said, for he couldn't think of another thing to say.

There was silence again besides Carrie relaying basic directions.

"How are you and Elaine getting along?" Carrie asked politely.

"Oh, yeah, we're fine," Al said.

"You don't sound so sure?" Carrie said.

"Well, I enjoy her company very much. She's a psychologist; sometimes she comes into the office to work with a suspect or a victim. She's great. But sometimes I wonder if she's too smart for me, or her family don't like me – which they don't, really – or whether we're actually going anywhere. I mean, we don't even know what we hope to achieve as a couple; we're not even talking about moving in together yet. Gah, I feel like I'm in high school."

Carrie smiled sadly. "There's always a 'but,' huh?"

"Not with us, there wasn't," Al said quietly.

Carrie looked up at him, pain warring with regret on her face. "Of course there was. We were great together, _but _I was... too scared to commit," she said, barely whispering the last part.

"We both were. You were scared because of your past. We both know that. I was scared because I'm a lousy guy."

"We both know that," Carrie chimed in. They laughed a little.

"I hope you're both very happy together. Left," Carrie said.

"Thank you," Al said as he turned the car.


	3. Chapter 3

"There, that's it," Carrie said, pointing out a crumbling garage over the road. Her brows crinkled in confusion. "How can such a crummy place be loaded up with armoured SUVs... and Lamborghinis? Hey, is that a Four-Five-Eight?"

"Kit cars."

"Yes! Roe said the shassy and the body didn't match. Is that even legal?"

"Only if he bought everything," Al said as they climbed out of the car. Carrie had to be lent a hand, a fact which she resented.

"Can I help you?" a greasy man in coveralls appeared.

"Hi there, Jermaine Olo? We're from NYPD, mind if we ask a few questions?" Carrie asked it in that painfully sweet way she always approached suspects with.

"Sure."

"We just followed a car's serial code here – apparently, you both bought and sold a black armoured SUV. Or rather, some random car with an SUV stuck on top. It's a kit car. Do you do that here?"

"Uh, yes, we make kit cars here, affordable alternatives to sports cars."

"Yeah, but are you legal?" Al asked succinctly.

"Sure, we buy fake bodies from a seller in Texas and the shassies are from cars we buy. We don't change the serial numbers or, or anything."

"Is that right?" Carrie asked, clearly implying with her tone that she wasn't convinced.

"You see, the car we recovered – bought and sold by you – had a fake serial, fake registration. In fact, most of the parts are mixed up. The undercarriage is a Jeep, I believe. Engine from an Evoke. Anything to say?"

The retailer hesitated. "I just buy the cars and fit the bodies, I don't control that."

"You just fit the bodies? Just like that?" Carrie asked.

"Sure."

"See, that doesn't quite sit right with me. Because not all cars are the same size, are they? So how do you get some great hunk of SUV to sit on top of a jeep with an Evoke in its mouth?"

"Well, uh..."

"Yeah, okay, hands behind your back. Al?"

"My pleasure," Al murmured as he cuffed the salesman and muttered his Miranda rights, the charges at this stage merely being the sale of illegal vehicles.

"We are getting nowhere fast," Carrie complained quietly.

"Yeah, well they're all like that. You're just as impatient as you were in Syracuse, I see."

Carrie gave a short laugh to cover how that part of her life still affected her expression and the strength of her voice. "Yeah, guess some things never change. Like that hair."

They both laughed together while the salesman looked at them funny.

_Carrie ran her fingers through Al's short hair as his head rested in her lap. The leather headboard was cool against her back, though her bra clips dug in a little._

"_Al, what did you do to your hair?"_

"_Nothing, why?"_

"_It's... well it's... this bit just won't stick down! And this bit is really curly, and this bit... urgh! Jeez, you killed it!"_

_Al laughed and sat up. "You're silly – my hair is fine."_

"_You should be embarrassed with hair like that – it needs a cut."_

"_Yeah, I have one booked."_

"_No you don't – twenty-seventh September last year, Sally the hairdresser asked if you wanted to book now or phone in and you said – and I quote – "I'll phone in around January, thanks Sally. I love your hair blonde, by the way." It is now March. And her bleached hair made her look orange"_

_Al laughed. "All right, all right, I'll phone in tomorrow."_

"_You mean today."_

"_What, it's late–?"_

"_Nope, it's just early. Turned two A.M forty-three seconds ago."_

"_Must you be so pedantic?"_

"_Well the obvious answer is, of course, yes, I can't help but be pedantic. You don't catch on very quick, do you?"_

"_Sure I do," Al replied with a passionate kiss that sent all worries about his hair to the back of Carrie's mind. They melted together and sank down into the bed._

"Who the hell is that?" Roe brought Carrie out of her reverie when he opened her car door for her, propping up her crutches where she could clamber onto them.

Carrie glared at him in response. "This is Jermaine Olo, he owns the _questionable_ car lot where that SUV was purchased."

"My shop is not questionable!" Jermaine protested. "It's perfectly legal!"

"Shut it!" Al commanded, pulling him out of the car and toward the precinct. "As if," he muttered to himself afterwards.

"Roe, can you run all his sales and repairs, I also want to know if he shot those brakes in the family car. If that's what even happened – hey, where are we on that car?"

"Sure thing to the first, I've no idea to the second," Roe shrugged and jogged up the steps into the building.

They headed back into the precinct as Carrie took a look at the sky. It was probably going to rain later, and she'd left her coat at home; dashing for the car was easier said than done when with crutches. At least there was a chance it would wash away the snow.

Once Carrie made it to the office a minute or two after the others, Nina caught her to tell her that, "The male passenger, Michael Greenway, just got out of surgery. They had to pin his leg. Little girl is fine, Grandparents are looking out for her, little boy is still in intensive care. He's comatose. The wife died in the explosion."

Carrie had to sit down.

"You mean, she was alive after the impact?"

"Yeah, it was smoke inhalation that actually killed her, but there were dozens of fragments punched into her chest. Ten minutes after she got into the ER they tried to resuscitate her – didn't work. She was too far gone already."

Breathing became difficult for Carrie as she brought a shaking hand to her mouth.

"Carrie, are you okay? Carrie? Al!" Nina tried to comfort Carrie, putting a hand on her forehead to see if she was in shock.

"What is it, Nina?" Al said after he jogged over to Carrie's desk.

"Look at her, I can't tell what's up. I just told her about the family." Nina sounded very confused, but Al realised what was wrong. He'd heard from the witnesses he'd interviewed at the scene how Carrie had saved the family. Most of them.

"Carrie," Al bent down to her level. It was hard to resist the instinct that told him to take her face in his hands, or to hold her close. "Carrie, this is not your fault."

"I... I just left her there. She was _alive_, and I... I can't believe that, I was so damn close!"

"I know, Carrie, and believe me, you did an amazing job. Not many people would have gone to help. You were a hero to that family."

"Yeah, maybe, but can't you just empathize a little?! That man had to see the love of his life blown to bits, and she was _alive_! Can you imagine watching that happen to someone you love?!"

Al stopped for a moment and had to swallow before he could speak. "No," he said finally. "I can't imagine how terrible that must be."

Carrie met his eyes for a long moment before grabbing her crutches and marching over to Roe's desk with a new shock of determination.

"Bring up every traffic cam in a five-mile radius, I want to know where that SUV came from and I want to know who the hell put it there. And I also want to know where the family was headed, call Tania and ask her to track some GPS signals."

"You got it," Roe assured her.

"Carrie, where are you going?" Al asked as she marched down the hall.

"I want to talk to the grandparents and then the husband when he wakes up. I wanna know everything."

"Carrie, this is a very delicate time for them, maybe you should wait until you're a little calmer."

"I'm not going to _be _calmer, Al, until we catch this bastard. I'm not going to be calmer until I find out who it was that put me in a position where I let a woman die!"

She stalked out of the precinct and drove to the hospital, not even wincing as she moved her feet across the car's pedals.


	4. Chapter 4

_Hi there!_

_I am so excited to resume this story! I've recently been re-watching Unforgettable and remembering how much I love the show and Carrie as a character. I apologize if you feel there are any inconsistencies; upon my return to this story I realised it really wasn't my best - my writing has much improved since I began this! Please enjoy the story and check out the previous chapters, which I have updated._

_Thanks, guys! :)_

_KT X_

_ Green_Tiger_21_

* * *

><p>When Carrie reached the hospital, she headed straight for the ICU. Several nurses offered themselves up – the broken woman obviously needed company – whom she brusquely and pointedly rejected. Twice she got lost in the maze of corridors and stairwells that surrounded her, before the yawning double doors gave her up.<p>

The kids' grandma looked weary. The young girl sat with her, with just a bandage around her knee to show for the collision. She continually ran a pink plastic brush through a blonde doll's silky hair, before setting her neatly down on the next chair and reaching into Grandma's purse for a brunette doll. She began to brush again.

"Hello," Carrie said quietly. Her voice wavered. She was so guilty, and also infuriated with herself. She was barely holding it together, and she resented this, too.

Before Carrie could go on, though, the young girl – Alisa! Carrie remembered her name; she was starting to get worried: she was having partial memory lapses, maybe a common symptom for most people, but not her – stood and reached for her.

Carrie stood awkwardly with her crutches while the little girl hugged her thighs. When Carrie looked up at Alisa's grandparents, her eyes were wet with tears and her mouth hung slightly open.

When Alisa released her, Carrie wiped her eyes and sniffed. Where she normally would have knelt, she bent at the waist to get as close as possible to Alisa's level. "Hey, how you doing Alisa?"

"I'm OK, thank you," said a small voice.

"Yeah, you're not hurt?" Carrie asked, fighting sobs. I must be concussed, she thought. But then... she'd never had a case this personal.

"Just a bump," Alisa pointed.

"That's good!" Carrie smiled through tears. "I'm glad to hear it."

"Are you an angel?" Alisa asked innocently.

"What?"

"Angels heal and save. Angels can live forever and fire can't hurt them. So you must be one, right?"

Carrie took a ragged breath. Being compared to an Angel, by the daughter of a woman she could have saved. It made her feel worse; thick with guilt and even angrier that she didn't return for the last passenger.

"Oh, I'm no angel, sweetie," Carrie said and stood.

She met the eyes of Alisa's grandma. She had beautifully clear blue eyes framed with soft, wrinkled, tan skin. Her eyes, too, shone with tears.

Alisa returned to her dolls as Carrie faced this person. "Hello Carrie," she said. "My name is Sylvia. I'm... Caitlin's mother."

Caitlin.

The woman whom Carrie had left behind.

Suddenly Carrie was finding it especially difficult to breathe. She wasn't sure she could face it. "I'm..." She tried again, "I'm so sorry," and with that, she broke down. She raised a hand to her mouth to stifle her sobs, the crutch hanging off her elbow.

Much to Carrie's surprise, Sylvia came over and embraced her, gently engulfing her, though she was far shorter than Carrie.

Her mind swimming, Carrie thought of her own mother, her brain slowly wasting away, and how this woman reminded her of her childhood. She smelled of lavender. Her mother had always used lavender soap.

Carrie cried into Sylvia's shoulder while receiving the woman's comfort, until she managed to pull herself together. "It should be me comforting you," she sniffed.

"I'm a matriarch," Sylvia explained with a sad smile. "It's good for me to look after everybody. To occupy my mind."

"I'm so sorry," Carrie whispered again.

"Whatever for, love? You brought me back my family!"

"But... Caitlin... She was alive. When the car went up. I could have saved her." Carrie bit back a thick, heavy lump in her throat.

"I try not to dwell," Sylvia said. She placed her hands around Carrie's face. "I thank you for your strength. Don't you think my sweet Caitlin would want her children to live on?"

"Right, no, of course, I'm sorry," Carrie said.

"Stop apologising, dear. Why don't you go see Benjamin? My husband is with him; he just woke up. I'm sure he'll want to thank you."

Carrie did not add to the sentence _for leaving his mother to die_. Reason told her that this wasn't her fault. In fact, she knew it was ridiculous to blame herself. But her heart told her that she could have done more.

The rest of her visit was smoother. Ben was tearful and asked her to bend down to hug him. Sylvia's husband, Mark, hugged her, too. She managed to recreate some basic info about the crime that the children remembered: the SUV was already in the middle of the road, their father couldn't brake their MPV, and when he pulled the emergency brake they were already far gone enough for it to be useless, slipping on the ice.

Carrie sat on the end of Benjamin's bed while all three of them collected their thoughts for a moment.

She looked up at him at last. "I'm so, so sorry for your loss." She said. She allowed her eyes to be genuine, allowed the deep, forest-like tones to melt into liquid pools, giving up her emotions, her true inner thoughts, exposing her like she rarely allowed. "I'm so sorry," she whispered so quietly she couldn't be sure if the man heard her. He acknowledged it, however, with a slight nod.

Ben reached out for her hand and grasped it in both of his own. "I owe you a great debt," he said with tears pooling in his eyes. "And I know Caitlin would be so remarkably thankful to you."

One of Carrie's tears spilled over just as his did and she smiled at him woefully. She stood unsteadily onto her crutches and Mark walked her out to where Sylvia and Alisa sat; they immediately rose from their plastic chairs when they saw Carrie and Mark approaching.

Alisa looked about ready to say something from where she stood; Carrie discarded her crutches at last and crouched down, having to kneel on the leg with the injured ankle but stay afoot on the other leg, leaving her in an altogether uncompromising position.

Carrie had underestimated the girl's age before – she was slight but far too intelligent for the 'toddler' label Carrie had employed while at the scene – she could have been, instead, around five. The bandage around her knee looked odd as the bottom half of her tights-leg rested loosely around her ankle, while on the other leg the pink cotton was pulled tight enough that Carrie could see the small flowers sewn in. Her denim dungarees-dress was almost perfect but for a tiny rip at the bottom and a smudge of oil on the front.

As Alisa gazed up at Carrie, she couldn't help but feel her pain. Though Carrie had had several years on this girl, she remembered all too well the pain of losing someone so close to you. Reflected in Alisa's eyes was Carrie's decade-old pain, except in her it was raw and red and knifing. Her blue eyes shone brightly with newfound maturity and her light gold, almost red, hair bounced as she tilted her head.

"I think you're an angel," she whispered. "It's OK if you are, I won't tell."

"Oh, darling, I'm just a normal person." She said, though she was far from normal – she was hesitant to ask herself just how far.

The little girl reached towards the seat next to her, selecting the blonde doll, clearly her favourite. From the dolls now-perfect hair Alisa pulled a bright pink ribbon, barely the length of one of the doll's legs. She carefully laid the doll down and moved towards Carrie, specifically her hand as it rested on her good knee.

Around Carrie's middle finger, Alisa tied the pink fabric in a loose knot, simply tying two half-knots one after the other.

"What's this for?" Carrie whispered, smiling.

"To help you fly," Alisa said.

Carrie smiled wider and reached forward to hug Alisa, who welcomed the gesture. Carrie kissed the top of the girl's head before standing awkwardly. Before she could tumble backwards, Mark grasped her arm and propped a crutch beneath it.

"Thanks," she said.

"Sylvia and I would like for you to come to Caitlin's funeral," he said.

"Of course," Carrie replied quietly.

"Where could we contact you with the arrangements?" Sylvia asked.

"Oh, sorry," Carrie said and reached into her inside jacket pocket, pulling out a Queens Homicide business card. She flipped it over, pulled a pen from the same pocket and scribbled down her cell phone number. "You can call me here," she said.

"Thank you so much," Mark said, his voice thick with a distinct tremor, and hugged Carrie tightly. Sylvia did the same.

"Please be careful, love," Sylvia warned as though Carrie were her daughter, too.

"I will. Goodbye."

Carrie turned to the exit, giving Alisa one last smile and a wave with her ribbon-clad hand before leaving and navigating her way back to the elevator.

_Carrie sat in her dim apartment as Al walked around, knowing the place better than his own, grabbing cold beers for them as well as a soft blanket which he draped over Carrie's shoulders._

_Earlier that day, the young daughter of their murder victim had thanked Carrie for all her hard work. The girl was seven and Carrie had not yet seen her with dry eyes, or absent of wet tear tracks, which was understandable._

_After that meeting, Carrie had been far too aggressive with a suspect and they'd had to turn him loose. He'd alibied out, anyway, but she hated to see the bastard leave. Now Al was all that stood between her and someone much higher up than him prepared to initiate an official review._

_But more than that, Carrie was cut up; they were still no closer to finding the killer of that child's mother._

"_Relax, Carrie, we'll get somewhere tomorrow."_

"_Sure."_

"_We will," he reassured her, setting their drinks on the coffee table and using his free hands to tuck the blanket right around Carrie as though she was slight and vulnerable like the girl who had visited her that day._

"_Relax," Al repeated in a whisper. He nudged her gently and encouraged her to lie back on her couch, curling her into a foetal position as she tucked both hands beneath her cheek._

"_I hope she's OK tonight – the little girl," Carried murmured._

"_Me too. And she will be, she's grieving with others who are grieving, and who love her."_

"_Yeah."_

_Carrie reached for Al's hand and pulled him toward her; he laid beside her on the small cushions and wrapped an arm around her waist. When she turned slightly towards him he kissed the corner of her mouth ever so softly._

_Later that night, once the beer was drunk and the blanket folded neatly away, they retreated to the bed and resumed their positions: Carrie curled up into a ball while Al laid behind her, stroking her arm, kissing her neck and whispering sweet nothings in her ear._

_They fell asleep like that, yet when they woke Carrie had turned towards Al, her head rested perfectly in the hollow between his head and shoulder. It was like his gravity had acted upon her overnight, pulling her towards him as she slept. They were both awake, but they laid for a long while in their embrace, enjoying each other's comfort and peace._

Carrie blinked as though she'd been asleep, startling herself back to reality, back to now, and the rain on her windshield as she sat in her car on a dingy street in Queens with a police station on it.


End file.
